Contemporary intangible cultural heritage: between community and market

If everything intangible that we do is intangible cultural heritage then at least one consequence of this is that the idea of subjecting it to some sort of regime of legal protection or recognition is problematic. This risk is, of course, recognised by the authorized heritage discourse, which seeks to put some limits on the concept of intangible cultural heritage and thereby resists disintegrating under the weight of its own expansion. However, as this chapter argues, we should be wary of assuming that this authorized discourse, as embodied in things like the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (CICH), correctly identifies what is intangible cultural heritage or properly protects it. These problems are particularly acute in relation to intangible cultural heritage as a contemporary phenomenon, which not only presents an intrinsic challenge to the authorized heritage discourse but also seems particularly likely to have some overlap with the type of cultural creativity that is subject to the competing protection of the intellectual property regime. In order to analyse these issues, this chapter is divided into three substantive parts. The first attempts to lay down some parameters for the concept of contemporary intangible cultural heritage. The second part measures these parameters against the international legal superstructure, in which the authorized heritage discourse might be regarded as finding its particular expression. And in the third part the relationship between contemporary intangible cultural heritage and intellectual property rights is considered